


Tonie Stark (HBIC)

by orphan_account



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, F/F, Rewrite
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-17
Updated: 2015-03-17
Packaged: 2018-03-18 09:33:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3564749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Antonia Eleanor Stark (known as Tonie to, well, everyone) is a media darling with an obnoxious personality. She has spent her whole life in the public eye. Damn if it doesn't work for her.</p><p>She’s going to see if she can fly.	</p><p>“Alright,” she says. “Dummy, you’re on the fire department. Butterfingers, roll the camera.” Tonie takes in a deep breath. Alright. “Let’s see if 10% thrust capacity can achieve lift. And three, two, one.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Iron Lady

The desert is full of too much sand. Tonie is going to – she is going to buy the desert. She would own it, and then she would flood it up with water. Turn seven seas into eight; fill it up with tropical fish. Hell, she could turn it into a preserve for endangered sea life, save the whales and all that.

Tonie recognizes in that moment that she probably has heatstroke.

She continues stumbling over scorching dunes though. There’s nothing else to do. She blew up the cave. Maybe it’s crazy – maybe it’s the heatstroke – but she misses the cave. It was cold there at least, dark too, the blissful opposite of the fiery heat and light of the desert. Probably that was the heatstroke talking.

Her skin is past burnt when Rhodey finds her. She feels like a steamed lobster: red, dead, and thoroughly disillusioned with the world. She’s sure that lobsters are disillusioned at some point in their lives.

 It’s definitely the heatstroke.

She sees helicopters. Hoping they aren’t cruel mirages, she waves and shouts. The possibly fake helicopters land.

“How was the fun-vee?” is the first thing Rhodey asks. Then, with concern, he tells her, “Next time, you’re riding with me.”

It must not be just a hallucination, because Tonie is pretty sure that mirages can’t hug you no matter how hard they try. He wraps her up in his arms, smelling like smoky cologne and sweat, and it is divine after only smelling real smoke and her own horrific b.o. for hours.

The inside of her throat must have been coated with sandpaper when she wasn’t looking, because it’s scratchy and rough. “The fun-vee? Was great, thanks for asking, Rhodey.”

She doesn’t tell him he’s putting painful pressure on her sunburn, just lets him hold her until he’s secure in the knowledge that she is there. That she is alive. That she isn’t lost anymore. Hey, that’s what friends do.

 

Rhodey helps her down the ramp, guiding her with her good arm. “Careful, bump here,” He warns her.

“C’mon, Rhodey, I’m a big girl. I can walk down the ramp by myself,” Tonie says stubbornly, though she’s smiling. Though she’s aching, feels like death warmed over, and pretty sure her arm is at least vaguely fractured. Though her skin is still bright red, still flares up in pain even when Rhodey had smeared her entire body with slick aloe, still feels too-tight and too-dirty. Though she knows without assistance she’d probably topple to the ground within four feet.

“Yeah,” Rhodey says, “I know. But Potts will kill me if I don’t help and you fall.”

They stop walking, and both of them survey Pepper. In her dark pantsuit, with her hair pulled back in a low bun, she cuts an imposing figure.

“Fine, man,” Tonie allows. “I’ll be your damsel in distress so you can save your ass from Pepper’s potential wrath.”

Rhodey shakes his head and lets go of her arm when they reach the bottom of the ramp. “I’ve got to go talk to my superiors now, but I’ll be in touch ASAP.”

She nods absently, watching him walk off. Then, she turns to her awaiting P.A. and smiles sheepishly.

“Your eyes match your hair,” Tonie jokes. “They’re red.  Shedding some tears for your beloved long-lost boss?”

Pepper laughs, catching Tonie in a gentle hug, being careful of her sling. “No, they’re tears of joy. I hate job hunting.”

Tonie breathes in the scent of Pepper’s subtle perfume, her shampoo, a recently dry-cleaned suit. She can smell warm wood, paper, and dark ink. It brings her back to the office, signing boring paperwork after another day of sitting dutifully in boring meetings listening to boring people. Tonie never thought she could miss that smell, but she did.

“Don’t worry, Pep, your vacation’s over. Momma’s back,” Tonie says, freeing herself from the embrace. “Hey, Happy, let’s get this show on the road, alright?”

She claps him on the back as she passes him with her good hand, getting in the back of the car with some difficulty. The cold leather is divine, but Tonie grimaces when she realizes she’ll leave aloe behind when she gets out. Pepper slides in next to her.

The engine purrs when Happy turns the key, and he makes eye contact with her in the rearview.  “Where to, ma’am?”

“The hospital, please, Happy,” Pepper answers for her.

“No!” Tonie exclaims.

“No? Tonie, you can’t not go to the hospital.”

“I said no,” Tonie singsongs childishly. She wonders what Pepper would do if she stuck her tongue out. Probably sigh in that exasperated way she has.

“You need medical attention,” Pepper insists. “A doctor needs to look at you.”

“Pep, I don’t need to do _anything_. The military docs looked at me. Besides, I’ve been in captivity for the past three months,” Tonie reminds her harshly, “and there are only three things I want right now. I want an American cheeseburger, I want –“

“What _I_ want, Tonie, is for you to go to the hospital,” Pepper says.

“I want a haircut,” Tonie barrels on. “I want it all gone. Pixie cut. Hathaway-esque, yeah?”

“Like you said, you were in captivity for three months. That means hospital first,” Pepper insists.

“And the last thing is a press conference. Right now. Well, actually, not right now. I want a cheeseburger and a haircut, and then we go take care of the press,” Tonie finishes. “ _Then_ you can drag me to a hospital.”

“You want to get a haircut? _Now_?”

“Yeah, come on, Pepper,” Tonie shrugs. “I’ll go the hospital right after the press conference if we do this.”

“Oh, fine,” Pepper concedes, reaching into her purse to retrieve her phone, “but if you die of blood poisoning or something before we reach the hospital, it’s your fault.”

 

She stands up to speak with mustard still in the corner of her mouth and shorn hair stuck to the back of her neck. It’s undignified. Her legs, hidden by the podium, shake as she announces the news – _no more weapons!_ – but she makes sure her voice doesn’t.

Obie yells at her a bit afterwards, which isn’t surprising because the old coot _loves_ yelling at her. He doesn’t ask her how she is or what happened. Quintessential Obie. Still, he’s the closest thing to a father figure she’s got.

 

“Will that be all, Ms. Stark?” Pepper asks her later, her eyes wet and her hands wet and the old arc reactor held in between.

“That will be all, Ms. Potts,” Tonie replies. She tries to forget what cardiac arrest feels like and tries to remember how to smile. “Thanks.”

 

She shows up unannounced to interrupt one of Rhodey’s military “pep talks”. Sure, she’s got his schedule - but if she waited until he was alone, she wouldn’t have an audience of overeager cadets when she started to tease him. As it is, he only lets her insinuate accidental homosexuality before he dismisses his group.

“I swear, I didn’t expect to see you walking around so soon,” Rhodey says.

“Psh, I’m doing a lot more than walking, Rhodey. Speaking of walking, though, walk and talk, buddy,” Tonie says, tapping him on the chest. She leads him through the halls of the complex. “I’m actually working on something really big right now, buddy.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“You’re going to make a lot of people round here real happy, Tonie,” Rhodey divulges. “That press conference? You are not the military’s favorite person right now.”

“No, it’s not…” Tonie stops in her tracks. “It’s not… well, it’s not _for_ the military.”

“You serious?” Rhodey asks. “Are you a big old softie now or what?”

“C’mon, Rhodey, stop. I just need you to listen to me.”

“What you need is time to get your head back on straight.”

“Rhodey, I’m serious!”

“I am too.”

Tonie leaves, feeling angry and betrayed, but already drawing schematics up in that big beautiful brain of hers. God, she loves that big beautiful brain of hers.

 

“JARVIS, new file,” Tonie says, idly, like she hasn’t been planning this since her disastrous meeting with Rhodey earlier in the day. Deceptively casual. “Let’s call it… MK II.”

“Yes, ma’am,” JARVIS says. “Shall I store it on Stark Industries’ Central Server?”

“Actually, no. See, JARV, I don’t know who I can trust right now,” and god, Tonie could not admit this to another human being for the life of her, but JARVIS was always safe to confide in. “So let’s keep this on the down-low _and_ on my private server, yeah? Heavily encrypted.”

The blueprints for MK I (big lump of low-tech metal that it was) appear in the air.

“Working on a secret project, are we, ma’am?” JARVIS asks, a hint of a chuckle in his artificial voice.

“We’re gonna keep this out of the wrong hands,” Tonie says decisively, manipulating the holograms with ease. “But I know I can do some good with this.”

 

Dummy screws her feet into the shiny plated gadgets. Tonie hides all of her nervousness with a hailstorm of disparagement.

“Next. Up. _Not_ in the boot, Dummy. Right here. You got me? Stay put. Nice. You're useless, no help at all. Move down to the toe. I got this. Ow! Okay, _I'm sorry_ , am I in your way? Up. Screw it. Don't even move. You, my fine robotic friend, are a tragedy.”

 

She’s going to see if she can fly.                  

“Alright,” she says. “Dummy, you’re on the fire department. Butterfingers, roll the camera.” Tonie takes in a deep breath. Alright. “Let’s see if 10% thrust capacity can achieve lift. And three, two, one.”

She flies through the air for two glorious seconds, and then she slams into the ceiling – _fuck_ – and back onto the floor.

Dummy very slowly rolls over to where she lays on the ground, adding insult to injury by spraying her thoroughly with flame retardant. Great.

“JARVIS?” Tonie asks after a pause, wheezing. “Am I dead?”

 

She’s playing around with flight stabilizers for her hands (Superman’s a pile of bullshit, really, no one can achieve flight like that, it’s the exact opposite of aerodynamic) when Pepper interrupts.

“Obadiah’s back from New York,” Pepper says. “He brought pizza. What are you doing down here? I’ve been buzzing you.”

“Oh, you know,” Tonie replies vaguely. “Tell Obie I’ll be right up.”

“I will,” Pepper says, turning to leave. Then, she turns around again. “I thought you were done making weapons?”

“This isn’t a weapon, Pep – it’s a flight stabilizer! It’s harmless. I’ll show you.”

Tonie’s back hits the wall with a ton of force and _god damn it_ she was standing at least ten feet away from the wall. She’s going to feel this in the morning.

 

Obie’s brought pizza from New York, the good stuff, Tonie’s favorite, and that’s how she knows his meeting sucked.

“It went bad?” she asks anyways, already reaching for one of the boxes. Hey, getting thrown into walls/ceilings/floors all day leaves a girl hungry. Pepper sits down next to her, looking famished.

“Just because I brought pizza back doesn’t mean it went bad,” Obie says, despite the fact that it has come to literally mean that exact thing.

“Yeah, right,” Tonie says snidely, opening the box. Mm, pepperoni.

“Would have gone better if you were there, _Antonia_ ,” Obie says. Wow, first name territory.  What’s his deal? It’s not her fault she missed whatever this meeting was about.

“ _Obadiah_ , you told me to lay low. So I did. I lay low, and you take care of…” she gestures vaguely, “all the boring stuff.”

He looks ticked off. She has that effect on people. “Lay low for the public. For the press. You didn’t need to ignore a board of directors meeting.”

“Who wants to hang out with those old farts, though?” Tonie asks. “Last time I went to a board meeting, Hutchinson asked me when I was planning on getting married and Richards told someone I needed to stop ‘thinking with my lady parts’.”

Pepper nods in agreement.

“Despite the board’s _charming_ sexism, Tonie,” Obie says, “you’ve got bigger problems. The board’s filing an injunction and claiming you’ve got a bad case of PTSD.”

“What?!” Tonie asks, incredulous and incredibly angry. She _owns_ Stark Industries and she wouldn’t know PTSD if it bit her in the ass.

“They want to lock you out.”

“Why, because the stocks dropped forty points? We knew that was going to happen.”

“Fifty-six and a half,” Pepper interjects.

“Fine, fifty-six and a half. Point is, we still own controlling interest in the company.”

“The board has rights too, Tonie,” Obie says. “They're making the case that you and your new direction isn't in the company's best interest.”

Oh no.

Tonie huffily drops the slice of pizza she’d been about to cram into her mouth back into the box. “Are you kidding me? I'm being responsible for once!”

Obie and Pepper exchange glances, Pepper looking nervous and Obie unsurprised.

She stands up from the white ottoman, agitated.  “This is a new direction... for me... for the company - I mean me on the company's behalf, being responsible for the way that… This is just fuckin’ great, Obie!”

“Tonie, come on, calm down,” Obie tries.

“No,” she brushes him off. “I’m going down to the shop. Don’t bother me.”

“Hey, hey, Tonie,” Obie tries again, abandoning his own pizza to block her path to the stairs. “I’m trying to turn this around for you, so how ‘bout you throw me a bone and let me pitch _that_ to them.”

“No!” she says – the arc reactor is hers, and she’s as protective of it as she is of JARVIS or Butterfingers or You or Dummy. “Absolutely not. Obie, that stays with me.”

“Fine,” Obie says, semi-bitterly. “You mind if I come down to the shop with you to see what you’re up to?”

“Goodnight, Obie,” Tonie says firmly. “Thanks for the ‘za.”

 

She’s got the flight stabilizers on and the thrusters on. Butterfingers, again, with the camera.

“Day 11, test 37, configuration 2.0,” she starts. “Dummy is still on fire safety, for lack of a better option. And, Dummy, I swear to god, if you douse me again when I’m not on fire, I’ll donate you to a community college.

Tonie takes a deep breath. “Alright, nice and easy. Gonna start with 1% thrust capacity. Three…two…one…”

And she’s off the ground, hovering a few feet off the ground and it’s _awesome_.

She lands. It’s kind of that same sensation as stepping off a treadmill – a bit dizzy. Dummy wheels over to her, the fire extinguisher prepped in case of a fiery emergency.

Tonie frowns. “Dummy, don’t follow me around with the extinguisher, god, that makes me feel like I’m about to spontaneously combust.”

Dummy pauses.

He sprays anyways.

Tonie wipes her face clear of the foam. Why did she design all of her robots to be assholes?

 

MK II is finished, shiny silver and aerodynamic as a dream. She has Dummy and You and Butterfinger screw her into it.

The helmet closes around her. “JARVIS, you there?”

“At your service, ma’am,” JARVIS replies.

“Great,” she says. “Engage the Heads Up Display.”

The HUD springs into life, all bright blues and greens.

“Oh, and JARV? Import all preferences from your home interface.”

“Will do, ma’am.”

She looks around her shop – the HUD can tell her about the molecular composition of her favorite work table, the exact angle Dummy is holding his arm, the distance from here to the doors leading outside. Everything she could need to know is at the tip of her fingers.

“We ready, JARVIS?”

“I have been fully downloaded into the suit. We are online and ready.”

“Great. Test the control surfaces.”

Every piece of the suit comes to life, whirring and rippling in perfect working order.

“Test complete,” JARVIS says. “Preparing to power down and begin diagnostics.”

“Actually, JARV,” Tonie says. “Let’s not. Check the weather and ATC.”

“Ma’am, there are still terabytes of calculations to be done before the suit will be prepared before actual flight –“

“Sometimes you gotta run before you can walk, JARVIS: ready in three, two, one!”

 

She flies and it’s better than anything she could imagine. The suit cuts through the air like a hot knife through butter. It’s exhilarating and Tonie’s half-screaming half-laughing with adrenaline, joy --!

She falls and it’s scary – scarier than facing sexist professors at MIT and scarier than brokering a financial deal with a hardened general.

She slams into the ground once more and she _really_ needs to stop making a habit of this.

When she stands up, though, she has Butterfingers and Dummy release her from her slightly-dented metal prison while You fetches her all the ice packs she owns. When You comes back, she notices something set on her workshop table.

A glass cube, display case, holding the old arc reactor (a bundle of wires and copper) safe and sound. On the arc reactor: “Proof That Tonie Stark Has a Heart”. Oh, Pepper. What a lovely bunch of sentiment and red hair that woman is.

 

“Okay, JARVIS. The main transducer feels sluggish at plus 40 altitude…Hull pressurization is problematic. I'm thinking icing is the probable factor.”

“Very sharp, ma’am.” Is JARVIS being sarcastic to her? “If you wish to visit other planets, I suggest improving the exosystems.”

“Connect to the Stark Industries server,” Tonie says, “Have it reconfigure the shell metals. Use – let’s use the gold titanium alloy from the seraphim tactical satellite. That should ensure fuselage integrity while maintaining a nice power-to-weight ratio. Got it?”

“Yes. Shall I render using your proposed specifications?”

“Thrill me, JARVIS.”

Something on the television – that blonde reporter woman Tonie had fought with earlier, Christine Eversomething – catches her attention. “…and tonight's red-hot red carpet is right here at the Disney Concert Hall, where Tonie Stark's third annual benefit has become the place to be for L.A.'s high society…”

“JARVIS? Did we get an invite for that?” Tonie asks, frowning.

“No record of an invitation, ma’am.”

The television continues to blare: “...hasn't been seen in public since her bizarre and highly controversial press conference. Some claim she's suffering from posttraumatic stress and has been bedridden for weeks. Whatever the case may be, no one expects an appearance from her tonight.”

Well. She hasn’t been invited to her own party. She’s never minded _crashing_ a party, though, so after MK III is done processing, she might have to…drop in.

JARVIS snaps her out of her thoughts. “The render is complete, ma’am.”

MK III, without any paint, is entirely gold. Silver was a good look – flashy without being too flashy, but gold completely overstepped that.

“Little ostentatious, yeah, JARVIS?”

JARVIS snickers a bit. “Yes, you are usually so discreet, aren’t you, ma’am?”

“Humor me, JARVIS. Throw some hot-rod red in there.”

“That will help you keep a low-profile,” JARVIS says, amusement still prevalent in his robotic voice. “The render is complete.”

Now it looks perfect: flashy but not too flashy. Very Tonie Stark.

“Hey, I like it. Fabricate it. Paint it.”

“Approximate completion time is five hours.”

“Great. JARVIS, I’m going to hit up the Stark Benefit. Don’t wait up for me.”

 

“What’s the world coming to when a girl’s gotta crash her own party?” Tonie asks Obie.

Her mouth is smiling but her eyes are definitely not. Obie doesn’t look ashamed at all. “Tonie, I’ll see you inside.”

Inside, Tonie heads straight to the bar. With all these aches and pains, she needs a stiff drink like fish need water. “Give me a scotch,” she tells the bartender.

A suit interrupts her – meek and unassuming. “Ms. Stark? Agent Coulson.”

“Oh, yeah, yeah, the guy from the…Strategic…something.”

“Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division,” Coulson finishes with a bland smile.

“God, you guys need a new name.”

“I hear that a lot. Look, Ms. Stark, we understand that this is a trying situation but SHIELD desperately needs to debrief you. We have unanswered questions and time is often a factor in these sorts of things.”

Tonie really is planning on answering him, really, but she sees Pepper across the room and wow, she is _gorgeous_. “Uh-huh,” Tonie says blandly, knocking back the fancy scotch in a way it really doesn’t deserve. “Let’s put something in the books, Agent Coulson.”

“The 24th at 7 p.m. at Stark Industries?”

“Sounds great,” Tonie says. “I’m going to go to my assistant and we’ll make a date.”

She leaves the suit then, walks over to where Pepper stands schmoozing with a few women, drink in hand.

“Pepper!” Tonie interrupts. “You look fantastic – almost didn’t recognize you.”

“What are you doing here, Tonie?” Pepper asks. “Obie said you were staying home tonight.”

“Got cabin fever,” Tonie lies. “Where’d you get your dress?”

“A birthday present,” Pepper says, “from you. You have excellent taste in dresses, by the way.”

“I do,” she agrees. Her own dress is nowhere near as beautiful as the sapphire number Pepper has on; a no-nonsense LBD, perfect for just throwing on whenever she might need to hit up a formal event. “Hey, Pep, you feel like dancing?”

“With you? Oh no.”

“Come on, Pepper,” Tonie wheedles.

“Thanks, but no.”

“Am I making you uncomfortable?” Tonie asks. She flirts with – well, anything that moves. But she’s never really flirted with Pepper in all seriousness before and she’d rather not lose her superhuman P.A. because she came on a little too strong.

“No,” Pepper admits. “No, it’s just. I forgot to wear deodorant and I’m wearing a strapless dress and if I start dancing with you, Tonie, everyone will be watching.”

“You smell great,” she offers helpfully. “Like that perfume I got you for your _last_ birthday.”

 

She sees the pictures of Gulmira.

 

“Obie,” Tonie hisses at him, “have you seen those pictures?”

“The ones you took for Playboy? You know I don’t go looking for things like that, Tonie –“

She smacks his shoulder. “Obie! The pictures of Gulmira.”

“Tonie, Tonie,” Obie says, waving the reporter away. “You can’t be that naïve.”

“You know what?” Tonie says angrily, “I was naïve before, when they said, ‘Here's the line. We don't cross it. This is how we do business.’ lf we're double-dealing under the table... Are we?”

A reporter heckles for her picture, so she poses with Obie: one of his hands on her waist and she’s got an arm around him. She’s never liked getting her picture taken.

“Tonie?” Obie whispers. “Who do you think locked you out of Stark Industries? _I_ was the one who filed the injunction against you. It's was the only way I could protect you.”

The impromptu photo shoot is over and Obie walks away. God, Tonie wishes her dad had had better taste in friends.

 

She saves Gulmira for Yinsen’s sake.

Rhodey learns about the suit.

Pepper learns about the suit.

Life is good.

 

“Hey, Pep?” Tonie asks, busy soldering wires and messing with the suit. “You busy? I’ve got an errand for you.”

“What is it, Tonie?” Pepper replies, long-suffering.

“I need you to go to my office. You're going to hack into the mainframe and you're going to retrieve all the recent shipping manifests. This is a lock chip. This'll get you in,” Tonie tells her, tossing her the USB. “It's probably under Executive Files. If not, they put it on a ghost drive, in which case you need to look for the lowest numeric heading.”

“What are you going to do if I do this, exactly?” Pepper asks.

“Same routine as Gulmira,” Tonie admits. “Go in guns blazing, get rid of the S.I. tech, and get out in one piece.”

“Tonie, if you keep doing this, you’re going to kill yourself.” Pepper sounds distressed.

Tonie motions for JARVIS to turn down the blaring AC/DC. This was going to be an important conversation, and one she couldn’t just run away from, so god help her she was going to do it right.

“Pepper, I should have died in Afghanistan,” Tonie says, 3000% more seriously than anything that usually comes out of her mouth. “I didn’t. I wouldn’t be alive if there wasn’t a reason, and I know this has got to be it. And - you’re all I have.”

Pepper’s mouth twists sourly. “Oh, Tonie.”

“Will you do it?”

“I’ll do it.”

 

The phone rings, just hours later, it’s Pepper and Tonie picks up the cellphone without thinking.

There’s another ringing then, a buzz, like a vibrator left running on a table. She freezes and the phone clatters to the ground. She can’t move. Fuck.

Obadiah is behind her – he gently lowers her onto the sofa. “Easy, Tonie, breathe.”

He shows her the buzzing device, a little gadget. “You remember this, Tonie? It's a shame the government didn't approve it. There are _so_ many applications for causing short-term paralysis.”

Her blood runs cold even as he tucks the short strands of her hair behind her ear.

Obadiah continues. “You know, Tonie, when I ordered the hit on you, I was a little bit worried. You’d done so much for the company – like a golden goose. It was fate that you survived. You had one last golden egg to give. This,” he says softly, tapping the arc reactor through the fabric of her t-shirt.

Stane’s hand slips underneath the fabric to nestle between the valley of Tonie’s breasts, and she really, really wishes she could move right now because she’s just _aching_ to pop him twice in the jaw.

He disconnects the arc reactor. Tonie can barely breathe.

“Oh, Tonie, this is your Ninth Symphony. What a masterpiece - look at this. A new generation of weapons with this at its heart, weapons that will help steer the world back on course, put the balance of power in our hands…” Stane pauses. “Too bad you had to involve Pepper in this. I would have preferred that she lived.”

A wave of horror washes over Tonie; she wants to vomit.

 

She barely makes it downstairs.

 

Rhodey finds her. “Tonie? Tonie! You okay?”

Her eyes can barely stay open, but she manages to croak out, “Where’s Pepper?”

“She’s fine,” Rhodey reassures her. “She’s with five agents; they’re going to arrest Obadiah.”

“Rhodey, that isn’t going to be enough.” Tonie is a woman of excesses and she’ll admit it. That champagne swimming pool? Totally excessive. This huge mansion? Unnecessarily large. She and Pepper and Rhodey are the only people who ever stay here. But this one thing – Pepper’s safety – she could _never_ be excessive about that.

 

Fuck Stane.

 

She’s alive and Pepper’s alive.

They’re bruised to hell and back, but alive. Rhodey’s pissed at both of them – he has a hero complex, that’s practically the whole reason he joined the military, and so really he’s never thought that _Pepper and Tonie_ might one day be in danger while he’s sitting pretty in L.A.

Stane’s dead as a doornail - he’s deader than a doornail. Tonie made sure of that.

 

Pepper pats more concealer on one of her bruises, humming a bit as she makes Tonie’s skin look flawless. Good old Pep.

Tonie glances at the newspaper, folded on the table. The headline reads: _WHO IS IRON LADY?_

“Iron Lady,” Tonie says. “Not bad. I mean, I’d prefer Iron Maiden – great band – but I like the allusion to Maggie Thatcher, too.”

Coulson hands her a card. “Here’s your alibi.”

Tonie reads it quickly. Big party in Avalon on her yacht, over fifty guests, etc. She does throw parties like that; this Strategic-Homeland-Intervention-whatever was good.

“I was thinking we could say it was just Pepper and me on the island,” Tonie tries anyways. “More low-key.”

“Ms. Stark, I think the media would be suspicious if anything about you was ‘low-key’. Just read your alibi word for word.”

“What about Stane?”

“That’s being handled. He’s on vacation in a personal aircraft. And, as you know, small aircraft have poor safety records.”

Tonie continues to try and protest even as Pepper pats powder over her face. “But what about the whole cover story that it's a bodyguard? I mean, is that... That's kind of flimsy, don't you think?”

“Ms. Stark, it will be fine. Just stick to the official statement and this will all be behind you.”

“Agent Coulson?” Pepper pipes up, now busy smearing a bit of lipstick on Tonie’s mouth. “I just wanted to say thank you _very_ much for all of your help.”

“That’s what we do. You two will be hearing from us.”

“From the Strategic Homeland…”

“Feel free to call us SHIELD.”

“Right,” Pepper says, smiling. “Come on, Tonie, let’s get this show on the road.”

“You know,” Tonie tries really quickly, now that Coulson has left the room. “If I were Iron Lady, I’d have this really awesome girlfriend who knew my real identity. She'd be a wreck, 'cause she'd always be worrying that I was going to die... She'd be wildly conflicted, which would only make her crazier about me.”

“Tonie,” Pepper says. “Let’s deal with this first. Talk later. Yeah?”

She feels deflated, but she nods. “Yeah.”

“Will that be all, Ms. Stark?” Pepper asks softly.

“That will be all, Ms. Potts.”

 

She doesn’t do what’s expected of her. Really, when has she ever?

“I am Iron Lady.”


	2. Epilogue

“JARVIS!” Tonie exclaims. “Mommy’s home.”

“Welcome home, ma’am,” JARVIS greets her. “You have a visitor in the main living room.”

 

An imposing man, dressed head-to-toe in black leather, stands in front of her sofa. He’s got an eye-patch on. Wicked.

“Hey,” Tonie greets him. “Who the hell are you?”

“’I am Iron Lady’,” the man repeats. “You think you’re the only superhero out there? Stark, you've become part of a bigger universe. You just don't know it yet.”

“Okay, cool,” Tonie says, irritated. “Again, who the hell are you?”

“Nick Fury. Director of SHIELD.”

Oh, shit. 

Fury tilts his head, examining her. “We’d like to talk to you about the Avengers Initiative.”


End file.
